Chapter 39
I rest my chin on Luca’s chest, my hand rubbing lazy circles around the soft tuft of dark hair, my fingers tracing the mark on his chest. I see now it’s a tattoo, but I can’t tell what it is. My lazy circles match the ones he is drawing on my back. My hair, still damp from our shower, is splayed on the pillow behind me.
The silence is easy; just filling the space with each other is enough amid the heaviness of what Luca has unloaded. He told me how he killed his mother: he strangled her with his bare hands.
The same hands that fascinate me so much. The hands that hold me so fiercely and love me so tenderly.
When he hacked into the mob’s dark web, he was determined to learn about the hit because it was his mother who accepted the job. The payout was huge, and he wanted to know whose life was worth that much. When he couldn’t find a way into my father’s home with his computers, he met her there at the door.
She had worked for three months to seduce my father, knowing his penchant for taking on wives. She never really intended to marry him; in fact, the marriage wasn’t even legal. She only wanted to get close enough to come back and kill me.
It was going to happen the night my father introduced us. She was going to plant a device that would disable my father’s security system at a certain time. Luca says it was like a bomb but an electronic, silent one.
She would only need long enough to slip inside the house. From there, her virus would overwrite the cameras’ feed with one she pre-recorded. She would be free to take her time with the kill and stage it as if my father had murdered me. I would be gone, and so would he.
But she didn’t get to do any of that because Luca met her at my father’s front door just before he opened it. She had no choice but to play along as if she’d brought her son to meet her fiancé. What luck—my father had also called me to dinner for the same thing.
Luca didn’t know who would walk into the room. Horror washed over him because he knew his mother was planning to kill me—the woman he loved.
He knew immediately what he would have to do, so he left to prepare himself.
Luca came back that night and intercepted his mother before she could trigger her bomb. He pleaded with her not to go through with it, but she refused. She owed a crime boss, and this was the only way to clear her debt.
He told his mother that I was the woman he had fallen in love with at college. He had spent months telling her all about me, about Lenny. She never connected his nickname for me with Delaney Caputo—the mark she was going to kill.
Even after learning that, she was still going to do it.
So, Luca did the only thing that would keep me safe. He tackled her to the ground and straddled her chest, pinning her arms to her side. He strangled her. He watched the life leave her eyes. He sat there, in a dark corner of my father’s property where the cameras didn’t reach, and he called a Cleaner, telling him he would owe him a favor that could be called in anytime.
He called Jax.
While he waited for Jax to arrive, he watched me sit on my balcony and cry over him. He watched me dial his number, trying to call him, and then cried himself when he silenced my calls and sent them to voicemail.
He decided then that he couldn’t be with me and protect me. So, he promised himself he would stay away. He would watch me live my life from a distance and protect me.
He thought it would only take a few weeks… months, at most. Luca was going to find who put the hit out and he was going to end them himself. Then he was going to come back to me and beg my forgiveness.
In the nearly two years following that night, he and Jax had a few casual flings, but Jax went off the grid for a while—because he was hunting me. When Jax watched me cry over a cupcake through the scope of a gun, Luca watched Jax through a scope of his own. He watched Jax pause, and something inside him made him pause as well. Luca followed Jax as he followed me and saw the second Jax fell in love with me.
He knew the moment I burst into laughter at the spilled wine that I would fall in love with Jax too. So, he kept hunting my hunters. He stopped watching, not wanting to see me fall for someone else.
Then, before he knew it, it was my wedding day—the day I was going to give myself over to someone forever, and it wasn’t going to be him. Luca got wasted, and then he got a call from an inmate, one looking to cash in a favor. Jax, arrested at the altar, asked Luca to watch over me.
He laughed maniacally and told Jax everything. That yes, he would watch over the woman Jax loved, but Jax needed to know he loved me first.
Luca and Jax worked together then. Jax from prison and Luca tending to everything on the outside. He became a killer, a fighter, a getaway driver, a sharpshooter. He became whatever the job needed him to be. And he kept me safe.
He told me the same story Enzo did about the girl who was shot sitting at my desk—how they cleaned it up and took care of her respectfully for becoming an innocent victim in this war against me.
Luca and Jax became close. Through countless jailhouse phone calls, visitation days that left them both wanting more, and letters where they could say what they really wanted to say.
Enzo could give Luca something Jax couldn’t: a physical connection. Someone to come back to after a rough job and someone to wake up with. Someone to hunt with and someone to miss me with.
I brought the three of them together, and they fell in love trying to save me. They comforted each other when they couldn’t comfort me, and in sharing me, they formed a love that could last through anything.
But it wasn’t complete without their muse, and they were going to live without me as long as they could keep me safe. But not Jax. He dreamt of a life after the hunt, when they could come back to me, tell me everything, and beg for my forgiveness. It makes me smile, knowing Jax has gotten most of his wish—hopefully the most important part.
The hunt is still on, but we’re together now.
Luca was ready for it to end in death—mine or theirs—and he didn’t want to hope. That washes away my smile, and a tear runs out of the corner of my eye. He lived each day knowing it might be the one where he finally watched someone kill me because they failed.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply, his scent wrapping around me, grounding me. I wish I could take it all away, make it better, but I know it’s not that simple. Still, it feels like I’ve peeled back a layer of him that’s been buried so deep. I can’t help but think it’s my fault that we’re all tangled in this mess together.
But I won’t run from him. Not now. Not after knowing everything he’s done for me; for us.
I can feel how tense he is beneath me. His body is a wall of muscle, taut and stiff, as he tries to push the conversation out of his mind. I don’t let go of him, my arms wrapping tighter around his chest. He doesn’t say anything, but I feel the way his chest rises and falls under my touch—slow and steady, trying to calm the storm inside him.
“What is this tattoo of?” I trace over the shape with my index finger. It’s not defined, more like a smudge of paint.
I sense him smile. He turns over, facing me, pulling me close so we can tangle our legs together. His large hand rubs my hip and slides down my thigh.
“You never told me you were a virgin.” He leans forward slightly, rubbing the tip of his nose against mine. I close my eyes and hide my face against his chest.
“It was embarrassing!” My pitiful excuse is muffled. The moment he realized it flashes in my mind, and I pop my head back up. “No, you didn’t?” I accuse, looking at the tattoo and placing my hand over it.
The marks fit my first and second fingers perfectly. He smiles again, just like he did when I figured out he was Moanster23.
“I didn’t want to hurt you, and I tried to pull out, but you made me stop. Then you put your hand right here on my chest.” He covers my hand with his, holding it against his heart. “As soon as I left your dorm the next morning, I went to the tattoo shop and had them ink your bloody fingerprints on me.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, a wide grin spreading across my face that matches his. “Luca Bellini, that is simultaneously the most sadistic and romantic thing I’ve ever heard. Why does that turn me on so much?”
His hands run up and down my back. “Because we’re the same brand of twisted, baby. It’s why we’re meant to be together.” He kisses me, and my tongue begs his mouth for entry. He gives it to me. “But I have a confession.”
“Oh God.” I tease, rolling my eyes and collapsing onto my back.
He pulls me back with a chuckle and leans close to my ear. “You were my first too.” He kisses the shell of my ear before looking at me.
“You mean to tell me,” I roll over, pulling him on top of me so he can settle between my legs, “that this—behemoth of a cock”—I grind against him, making him growl as his dick hardens—“had never before graced a pussy before mine?”
He chuckles, and the sound of it seals up some of the cracks in my heart. “You’re very poetic.”
“I try. I’m a pretty good writer. You should read some of my stories.”
He grinds against me now. “If you think I haven’t already read every single one of your books, then I’m hurt.” God, every word he says makes me want to kick my feet like a giddy little girl. Instead, I bite my lip and watch his gaze move down to my mouth. “You took all my firsts too, Lenny. The first hand—other than my own—to make me come. The first tongue”—he licks my lips—“to ever taste my cock.”
Fuck me.
Please actually. Like please... fuck me... disrespectfully, of course.
I kiss him softly, gently, and he responds in kind. Slowly, but with an intensity I can feel down to my bones. I feel him relax, just a little, as his lips move against mine.
I pull away just enough to see his face, to look at him with all the tenderness I’ve been feeling—all the emotion bubbling up from somewhere deep. His eyes are still dark with the weight of everything he’s been carrying, but there’s something softer there now, a flicker of hope.
“I love you, Luca,” I whisper, my hand gently cupping his cheek.
“I just don’t want to lose you again,” he says, his voice thick with emotion. The words are raw, desperate in a way that almost breaks me.
“You won’t. I’m right here, Luca,” I reply, running my thumb across his lips. “Right here. And I’m not going anywhere.”
He breathes deeply, his fingers digging into my hip as he pulls me closer, burying his face in the crook of my neck. It’s like he’s trying to hold on to me, to keep me tethered to him, like I’m the anchor he’s been searching for. I can feel the weight lifting off him, just a little, with every breath he takes, and it gives me hope that we can rebuild what was broken.
I focus on the steady rhythm of his breath, the warmth of his body grounding me. For the first time in what feels like forever, we’re just two people in this moment, unburdened by the chaos swirling around us. I feel safe here, in his arms, like I’ve finally found a place where I belong.
But the moment doesn’t last. A sharp, shrill sound rips through the calm, slicing the air with a jarring urgency. My heart skips a beat as the alarm blares, sending a cold wave of fear over me.
Luca’s eyes snap open, his body stiffening immediately. He pulls away from me, eyes wide with shock, panic flashing across his face for a brief second before his usual calm takes over. But there’s no hiding the raw emotion in his gaze—the worry, the fear, the anger.
“What the hell is that?” I whisper, my voice tight, fear creeping into my chest as the blaring alarm echoes in my ears.
Luca doesn’t answer immediately. His jaw clenches as he stands up, his body tense, like he’s ready to spring into action. He glances back at me, his eyes dark with something I can’t place.
“Stay here.”